USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Windham > History and proceedings of the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the settlement of Windham in New Hampshire held June 9, 1892 > Part 7
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
years. He was afterward employed as consular correspondent in the department of state, and was private secretary of Daniel Webster and with him at his death at Marshfield. Lucy, the youngest daughter, was my most excellent assistant in Westford Academy, and afterward married one of my predecessors in that institution, and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio.
One of the best representative business men of Windham was Col. Thomas Nesmith. He began his mercantile career when eighteen years of age, assisting his mother in conducting the business left by the sudden death of his father, and connected with it the sale of the linen made by the industrious mothers and daughters of that neigh- borhood. His younger brother, John, went to Haverhill, and served an apprenticeship with John Dow. On the expiration of his appren- ticeship, John had the business education, but it took cash to buy goods and start in business. John Nesmith was one of the brainiest men Windham ever produced in all financial matters. He soon laid before Thomas, who had saved six thousand dollars, a scheme that promised well for both, to which Thomas assented, and they engaged in general merchandise in Windham. This place was not sufficient to occupy the active mind of John long, and he soon opened another store at Derry Lower Village, as it was called. He soon after induced a Derry man to buy out the stock at Windham, and, leaving a younger brother to look after affairs at Derry, John and Thomas opened a wholesale dry goods store on Pine street, New York.
That was before the days of railroads, and steamboats, and I recol- lect that after the brothers had got started in New York, their sister, Lucy, who was my schoolmistress, in order to visit her brothers in the metropolis of America, went to Boston, took passage in a coasting vessel, and reached New York in safety at the expiration of nine days, as she wrote home. The two brothers met with that success in Pine street that Scotch-Irish tact and pluck usually have brought. John induced a younger brother and a cousin or two to go there and take an interest with them, and he looked out for a new field of adventure.
About this time Boston capital was investing in manufacturing in Lowell, and the Livermore estate in Tewksbury was for sale, which caught the eye of John as an investment promising well in the future, and, in connection with Thomas, he bought it. Thomas was always a gentleman of elegant leisure, who never troubled himself to look up an investment for his money, but kept ready to invest when a good one offered. Up to this time he had been popular with the unmar- ried people in Windham and Derry, and had tastefully performed the
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
delicate duties of best man at more weddings in those towns than any other ten men that could be found, but had never been in a position to need the return of a similar favor. But this summer, on one of his annual visits to Windham and Derry, he was interested in making himself agreeable to Miss Fay, one of the teachers in the Female seminary in Derry. This was a favorable time for his brother John to engage him to join in the purchase of the Livermore property, on the east bank of Concord river, and build with him a double house, for the home of each, a proposition to which he readily assented, and, having laid out a plat of ground for a park, they erected a modest house of wood, in which they both resided for some years. Each brother afterward built a residence commensurate with the wants of their growing families, commanding a view of the plateau laid out by them for a park. Both brothers were averse to mere show, and, as long as they lived, practiced the same economy which had been one of the secrets of their success in life.
Let me take you all into the old meeting-house, as it was in its palmy days, when I was a boy. We will enter, if you please, by the west door. In the raised wall-pew at your left sat John Hemphill, massive in make-up, with a brogue worthy of his ancestry, and when the choir in the gallery struck a tune with melodious chords, he would join in a majestic bass fit for a chorus of the skies. Next came the Revolutionary hero, David Campbell, who limped through life, by rea- son of the wound received in the army, with his son David, my Sun- day school teacher, a most excellent man. Next came Uncle Robert Dinsmoor, "the rustic bard," who was always in his place, and never failed to add his melodious tenor to the efforts of the choir. Next came the minister's family pew, and then the pulpit. On the east side of the pulpit sat Deacon Silas Moore, and across the aisle, in the body pews, sat Mrs. Hills and her family. In the rear of her sat Capt. Isaac Cochran, and by his side sat Esquire Armour. Next them, in a wall pew, sat Capt. McCreary, and so many others beyond the reach of my vision, till you come to the wall pew of Capt. John Campbell, with his tall family. Next came the Noyeses and the Ha- zeltines, and then the front door.
Moving past the door, going west, came Joseph Clyde, whose flow- ing gray locks and wide-skirted blue coat gave him a majestic mien. Next came John Hughes and Uncle John Dinsmoor; then, at the corner, Capt. William Campbell, with his bouncing family of twelve. Next was the pew owned by my father and our cousin, William Dins- moor. And, now, we are ready to go out at the same door we came
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
in, but wait a moment. Of the many fine families that occupied the body of the house were the Deacons John, James, and William Da vidson, all of them model men in all the walks of life. Robert Campbell, too, who, in the drowsy weather of summer, used to stand in sermon time, and shake off the otherwise overpowering sleep. Near him the Nesmiths sat, and still farther on Jeremiah and Christopher Morrison, with their two sisters of queenly beauty. But I must stay in this rehearsal, lest my failure of memory of names and faces of more than half a century ago should seemingly compel me, by failure to mention all, to make invidious distinctions, when all deserved mention.
Of the doctors that I knew, J. W. Perkins was the first in my day. I certainly have occasion to speak well of him, for in the winter of 1827 he attended me when sick with lung fever, fed me on calomel, and with most scrupulous care forbade my tasting cold water. But by careful nursing and the kindness of friends and neighbors, I came out in the spring with every tooth in my head loose-salivated and saved, as I suppose the doctor thought. He was a good citizen, and subsequently abandoned his profession for that of divinity.
About the time Dr. Perkins left the town, Dr. Simpson moved in. He was a native of the town, but had been absent since boyhood. He was a man of great push and vigor, had by his own industry earned the means of obtaining his education and profession, and had prac- ticed some years before locating in our town. He was a skilful sur- geon and physician, and the practice in the town was not equal to the mental demands of the doctor on his own powers. He purchased a farm over in the range, and united farming with his practice of medicine.
A few years after, he moved to Lowell, where he engaged in financial enterprises congenial to his tastes. Among them was that of building the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad. He was careless of his dress and personal appearance, and for years, in cold weather, his outer garment was a blue camlet coat. Time, which rejuvenates the field and the forest every spring, had an opposite effect on the doc- tor's coat, and it continued in the " sear and yellow leaf " all the year round. At one of the meetings of the board of directors of the road, at Plymouth, his associates on the board concluded that a well-dressed board of directors would enhance the value of their railroad bonds, in the market of Boston, where proverbially well-dressed men congregate, and they suggested to the landlord at the Plymouth House, that if some one of his guests should, by mistake, take the doctor's camlet coat, they would pay for a new coat that would fit the doctor's person. The hint to the landlord was sufficient, and in the night the old coat
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
mysteriously disappeared. An ample apology and a new coat from the landlord satisfied the doctor that a mistake, if not a misfit, had been made, and his associates paid the bill. He has passed away. I know the old Latin maxim, " De mortuis nil nisi bonum," but I can- not be true to history without laying at his door the blame for depriv- ing the Presbyterian church of the use of the old meeting-house. I was a boy in the gallery, and heard him discuss the right of the town to the meeting-house, and saw him marshal his hosts that cast the ma- jority vote, which resulted in the church leaving the house as a place of worship. True, the town, as such, built the house, in pursuance of its charter and the law of the state, but it had sold the pews inside, and deeded them to the purchasers, who had held possession some thirty-five years, consecutively. Now, for a part owner of the out- side of the house to drive out his co-tenant in the walls, and who owned the entirety of the inside, is an anomaly in law. A few days after the annual town-meeting my guardian took me away to school, and I neither saw nor heard of the subsequent acts of the church in going out of the meeting-house, but, at the close of that year, when I returned, I found the meeting-house empty on the Sabbath, and Mr. Cutler preaching in Bartley hall, a most unsuitable place, which soon was abandoned for the commodious house which has ever since been used as a place of worship by the Presbyterian church.
Of the many men who have honored their native town by well-spent lives, Robert Dinsmoor, " the rustic bard," especially deserves men- tion. He was one of the elders of the Presbyterian church for fifty years, and for the greater part of that time was clerk of the session. He was at Saratoga when Burgoyne surrendered to Gates, the turn- ing-point in the Revolutionary war. As a result of that battle, France acknowledged the government of the united colonies as an indepen- dent nation. He was then twenty years old, and volunteered, as most of the New Hampshire soldiers did, to go under General John Stark, of Londonderry. He learned to write on birch bark, as did all his brothers, and, although he had the benefit of some attendance on Parson Williams's school, yet, owing to the demands of his father for his labor on the land, he being the eldest son of the family and some years older than his next oldest brother, it was not possible for him to be spared to get an education. Books, in that day, were few and ex- pensive, and he was poor, as the whole country then was. He was a most genial and affable man, had a wide circle of acquaintances, for his day, and when we call to mind the fact that he had a family of eleven children to rear, with no income save what could be forced
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
from the reluctant soil of his farm, and the sale of wood cut there- from, and was called upon by his friends, upon any occasion, for a poetic composition, which took his time from the farm, and yielded no compensation except the mental pleasure of composition, we mar- vel at what he accomplished. He might have said, as did Pope,
" While still a youth, as yet unknown to fame, I wrote in numbers, for the numbers came."
He was a man of massive build, had a most musical voice, and a ready command of language.
He has been called by some who have assumed to criticise his poetic composition, an imitator of Burns. He was the imitator of no one. He wrote in the Scotch dialect, as he had a right to do. It was the dialect of the common ancestors of both. It was the mother tongue of each.
It is a well known aphorism that great exigencies make great men. It is equally true that the training of the mothers has made the heroes of the world. When the Spartan mother gave the shield to her son as he went into battle, with the injunction "return with this or on it," she taught him the elementary principle of success in every battle in life, "no surrender." I would not omit to speak of the loving hands, the kindly persuasive counsels, the self-denying toils of our mothers, to all which we are so much indebted for what we are and what we have done. The courageous, successful endeavor of the widowed mothers of our town is a living inspiration that will nerve the heart and uphold the hands of all mothers that may be called to face a similar experience. The life of Agnes Park Hemphill, widow of Captain Nathaniel, was an epic which waits a Homer to hand it down to posterity in verse. Colby University is indebted for its name and its funds to the heroic mother of its founder, in whose veins coursed the blood of the McKeens, the Dinsmoors, the Nesmiths, and the Davidsons of our town. How much we are indebted to the kind, patient, painstaking industry of the numberless female school teachers who have endured our wayward tempers and roguish tricks, and taught us that most useful lesson, obedience, as well as how to speak and write our mother tongue! Who can count the debt due to our late veteran Olive Park, whose tact and charm of manners held the annually recurring troops of little ones in tow around her till the three score and fifteen years admonished her that the silver cord must be broken.
But, my friends, let us glance over our country and see where the
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
Scotch-Irish have been found, and what footprints they have left on the sands of time. Bancroft says : "The first public voice in America for dissolving all connection with Great Britain came not from the Puritans of New England, the Dutch of New York, nor from the planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of North Carolina." The prototype of the declaration of independence was put forth by the Scotch-Irish at Mechlenburg, North Carolina, before Thomas Jefferson, another Scotch-Irishman, made himself and it immortal in Carpenter's Hall in 1776. Nay, more, after the mem- orable declaration had been passed by the Continental congress, and it was proposed that each member should put his sign manual to that document which made him a traitor to his then king, it was not till John Weatherspoon, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian preacher, the lineal descendant of John Knox, rose in his place with solemn mien and declared that his gray head must soon bow to the fate of the human race, but he preferred that it should fall by the axe of the executioneer rather than that the cause of independence of Great Britain should not prevail, that the hesitating stood firm, and every man came up after him and affixed his name to the immortal document. Of those who have filled the presidential chair, eleven have been of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and of the illustrious names that have aided in making the Supreme Court of the United States the most respected of all the judicial tribu- nals in the world five at least have been of Scotch-Irish ancestry.
The first independent legislative body organized in any of the so- called English colonies was that of New Hampshire in which Matthew Thornton of Londonderry, an Ulster man by birth, was its chief execu- tive, then styled president. The Scotch-Irish settled in Virginia and gave to the American Revolution Patrick Henry, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. They settled in Pennsylvania, and history has recorded the declaration made at Carlisle, before July 4, 1776, that these colonies must be free from the oppressive hand of Britain ; and for fifty years a Scotch-Irishman was governor of Pennsylvania. The Scotch-Irish settled in North Carolina, and May 20, 1776, sounded the keynote of rebellion in the Mechlenburg declaration. When the Scotch-Irish of the land declared that the American colonies should be free it meant that the Scotch-Irish blood was ready to flow upon the battle field, that the Scotch-Irish arm was ready to wield the battle axe, and that the word "surrender " would never be uttered. Who shall be found to write the history of the Ulster men in the United States ?
Of the many who have gone from this town, to other theatres of
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Address by Hon. James Dinsmoor.
action, no one has been known to cast disgrace on the town of his nativity, or that of his ancestry, by the commission of crime. Leon- ard A. Morrison, our most painstaking and accurate town historian, has found the natives of this town and their descendants in all the devious walks of business life, honored and respected by those who are law-abiding citizens.
The tendency has been to emigration. The manufacturing cities, with the demand for skilled labor incident thereto, have been a great attraction to the ambitious and venturesome of both sexes. The rail- road has offered new fields for occupation, has nearly annihilated space, and brought in competition with the farming interests of the town the cheap virgin soil of the West and South, and forced the cul- tivator to abandon the crops that supported the fathers, and adopt one not exposed to the competition of more generous soils or of more genial climates. The lessons of industry and economy, taken in with their mother's milk, have been their best banking capital.
And we can say to-day to the world, if it wants a good husband or a good wife, if it wants the example of a good father or a good mother, if it wants a good carpenter or a good mason, a good machinist or a good ship-builder, or that prime necessity of the travel- ing American, a man that will always have your baggage where you can get it, if it wants a merchant or a manufacturer, if it wants a member of a town or city government, if it wants a member of the state legislature or of congress, if it wants a lawyer or a doctor, a school master or a school mistress, a judge or a governor, a president of a college or of a deaf and dumb asylum,-in fact, if there should ever be found a place to be filled with the first order of talent, let it come to Windham and get its supply. And now, my friends, what can I say for those of us who have left the hearth-stone, that should be a fitting tribute to the worth of those who have withstood all the blandishments of city life, of manufacturing villages, of the boundless West, of the gold fields of California, and of the plains of Texas, and have trod the steps the fathers and mothers have trod, have kept bright and burning the light in the window for the wandering boy and girl, have sustained the tottering steps of the aged, and looked well to it that the reputation of our good town took no detriment by the passage of time; nay, more, have killed the fatted calf for us to-day and given us this royal reception ?
Daniel Webster said that the highest earthly reward any man could receive was the consciousness of a duty done.
May that be yours.
74
The Rock of Liberty.
THE PRESIDENT :- The next feature of the programme will be a song by the glee club, "The Rock of Liberty."
THE ROCK OF LIBERTY.
Oh, the firm old rock, the wave-worn rock, That braved the blast and the billow's shock. It was born with time on a barren shore And laughed with scorn at the ocean's roar. 'T was here that first the Pilgrim band Came weary up the foaming strand, And the tree they reared in the days gone by, It lives, it lives, and ne'er shall die.
Thou stern old rock, in the ages past Thy brow was bleached by the warring blast, But thy wintry toil with the wave is o'er, And the billows beat thy base no more. Yet countless as thy sands, old rock, Are the hardy sons of the Pilgrim stock, And the tree they reared in the days gone by, It lives, it lives, and ne'er shall die.
Then rest, old rock, on the sea-beat shore ; Thy sires are lulled by the breaker's roar. 'T was here that first their hymns were heard, O'er the startled cry of the ocean bird. 'T was here they lived, 't was here they died, Their forms repose on the green hillside. But the tree they reared in the days gone by, It lives, it lives, and ne'er shall die.
This magnificent composition was well sung by the club and roundly applauded by the assemblage.
THE PRESIDENT :- Ladies and gentlemen, considering the lateness of the hour, a very interesting letter from the old camping ground of our fathers on the soil of Ireland, will, for the present, be omitted. There will be an intermission for a short time during which dinner will be served, and after that the exercises will be resumed here in the tent. This will close the forenoon exercises.
The president, the speakers, and the distinguished guests, to the number of 140, repaired to the lower town hall where five long tables, beautifully spread and laden with choice delicacies, awaited them. The governor's table was in the center, at the end but on one side sat
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The Dinner.
the president of the day, with the governor and Mrs. Tuttle on his right. Opposite was Hon. James Dinsmoor, the orator of the day, with his wife, followed by ex-Senator James W. Patterson, and Attorney-General Albert E. Pillsbury and Mrs. Pillsbury ; while other special guests sat on either side of this and the other tables.
The president called the people to order and invited Rev. Cadmore M. Dinsmoor to invoke Divine Blessing.
The school children, with the school officers, teachers, and others, to the number of nearly 100, sat down to well-laden tables in what was known formerly as Bartley's hall, now Goodwin's hall, which stands fronting the town-house, and upon the opposite side of the highway. The rest of the people, to the number of some 1,500, were regularly seated in the tent, and served by waiters in an orderly and systematic manner. Each waiter knew his section and attended to it. Fifteen hundred packages of food had been previously prepared. Each con- tained bread and meat, cake, or other eatables, and a banana; the latter was separated from the food by a Japanese napkin. These were all placed upon a smooth, hard-surfaced manilla paper, cut for the purpose 16 inches square, which was then folded and pinned together in neat packages, and contained a variety and sufficiency to satisfy all. The committee had purchased in Boston 24 bailed wooden baskets. The bails were erect, the baskets were 22 inches in length, 14 inches wide, and 11 inches deep, with lids at each end. Each held from 20 to 25 of the prepared packages. Each gentleman waiter, with a light but well-filled basket upon his arm, with one lid securely fastened down, and the other opened sufficiently to take forth the bundle of food, passed through his appropriate section, and all were quickly and amply supplied. Everything was orderly, and there was not the slightest confusion. Large quantities of bread, meat, and cake remained after all had been supplied.
One hundred and twenty gallons of coffee had been made by a firm in Boston and shipped in tanks to the town-house,-hot and ready for use. Each guest had been provided with a mug: the coffee was passed through the great tent in strainer pails bought for the occasion, and as this work was systematized the same as the passing of the food, each guest was quickly supplied with the excellent beverage. In the same manner the guests in the lower town-hall, and in Goodwin's hall, had been supplied with coffee. Cold water was provided in abundance.
The band had early gone to the lower town-hall for dinner, and returned to the tent soon after the close of the forenoon's exercises, and entertained the people by playing the following: March, Wash-
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Address of Evarts Cutler, Esq.
ington Greys ; Overture, Orpheus ; Song without words, "Longing;" Concert Galop, "The Alarm." 1.
The Committee on Collation were William D. Cochran, Albert E. Simpson, and George E. Seavey. Mr. Cochran was absent attending the General Assembly in Portland, Oregon, the greater part of the time that preparations were being made for the celebration, and Mr. Seavey was prevented by private business from taking any part as member of the committee, so the burden of planning and carrying out the details of the work fell largely upon Mr. Simpson. He and those who aided him are entitled to much credit for the systematic, orderly, and efficient manner in which everything was done.
AFTERNOON EXERCISES.
After dinner, speaking was resumed in the tent. At a quarter to 3 o'clock the president called the assemblage to order, and said :
"The first things to be listened to will be the sentiments and the responses. And, to begin, we have the toast, 'The Town of Wind- ham-a place of sacred associations and pleasant memories. For many generations the honest industry of her people has been success- fully exhibited in each annual golden harvest ; and, better still, in the valued institutions they have established and sustained.' I have the pleasure of introducing to you the son of a former pastor, Evarts Cutler, Esq., of New Haven, Conn., who will respond to this senti- / ment." [Applause.]
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